Beyoncé's new album just gave Tidal a huge boost, and it shows the company's strategy is still working

Tidal’s exclusive album strategy has worked yet again, with
Beyoncé's “Lemonade”
catapulting the app over 200 spots in the iOS download charts,
landing it at the No. 2 slot.

Exclusives have been the backbone
of Tidal, Jay Z’s Spotify competitor, over the last few months.
Beginning in January, the service has seen three high-profile
exclusive releases: Rihanna, Kanye West, and now Beyoncé (all for
varying lengths of time). The three artists also own an
undisclosed stake in the company.

All three releases have done
their job in the short term, shooting the app up the charts.
Tidal peaked at No. 16 on the US iOS charts after Rihanna, No. 1
after Kanye, and No. 2 after Beyoncé. In between, it has lagged,
sometimes languishing at spots below No. 600 (Prince's death also
pushed the app up the charts, though not to the same
extent).

What remains to be seen is
whether Tidal can convert these new users, many of whom are
taking advantage of the free trial, into paying customers. Last
month, Tidal announced that it had reached 3 million paid
subscribers, compared to Apple Music at 11 million and Spotify at
30 million.

But the Beyoncé
download bump proves there are still potential customers that
have not already been brought into Tidal’s orbit, even after
Rihanna and Kanye.

To "exclusive" or not to "exclusive"

Exclusive windows have become a
source of controversy in the music streaming industry.

Spotify, one of Tidal’s main
competitors, has come out vehemently opposed to exclusive album
releases. The company provided this statement:

We believe long-term exclusives are bad for artists and they’re
bad for fans. Artists want as many fans as possible to hear their
music, and fans want to hear the music they’re excited about —
exclusives get in the way of both. Of course, we understand that
short promotional exclusives are common, we don’t have a total
policy against them, and we certainly respect the choice of
artists to decide what’s right for them. Bottom line, we’re
looking forward to sharing Beyonce’s awesome new music with her
millions of Spotify fans as soon as we can.

A Kanye “fan” is alsosuing the rapperfor making his album widely
available on other services after saying it would only be on
Tidal in perpetuity.

Beyoncé, for her part, seems to
have learned at least one lesson from Kanye's total Tidal
exclusivity (for a few weeks). She made her album available to
purchase on iTunes just 24 hours after its release, perhaps to
stem the flow of piracy that came with Kanye's new album."The
Life of Pablo" saw 500,000 illegal downloads on its first
day alone,according to
TorrentFreak.